


do you feel the thud when i fall? do you hear the crack when i break?

by millcrs (remoose)



Series: kid in lonely town [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Child Neglect, Drug Addiction, Gen, Head Injury, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Season/Series 03, Steve Needs a Hug, Unreliable Narrator, brief steve & max, tommy and carol and nancy are relevant but not present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remoose/pseuds/millcrs
Summary: Any time he returned to mom, she was loose and laughing and had that smell again. One time she sloshed red wine onto his white trainers and laughed about it even though he was seconds from bursting into tears.This time, though -- the last time he truly asked his father for anything -- she looked at him from her position on Mrs Diver's chaise-longue and allowed her face to soften in sympathy at his puffy bottom lip and half-formed tears. She pulled him into her lap, all silks and furs and wine on her breath and said:"You walk around the world like you've got a layer of skin missing, Stevie. Like everything hurts you that bit more."Steve doesn't remember much after that, figuring he fell asleep. But he wonders if that's how El feels; walking around this world that has taken so much from her -- that had given her so little in the first place. At least Steve has a mom, even if she is perpetually intoxicated. At least he has a dad, even if that dad hates him.El had Hopper, and the Russians took him from her. Fromthem. The Russians murdered him andgod, Steve wishes it had been him instead.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Steve Harrington, Joyce Byers & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler (mentioned)
Series: kid in lonely town [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648192
Comments: 19
Kudos: 222





	do you feel the thud when i fall? do you hear the crack when i break?

  
  


_“My mouth is a fire escape._

_The words coming out_

_don’t care that they are naked._

_There is something burning in there.”_

― **Andrea Gibson,** [ **The Madness Vase** ](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17165659)

* * *

Steve haunts his own house on a Friday night. Limbs fleshed open on the living room carpet like the mouth of a demodog. All the lights are on and the doors are wide open. All the lights are on and the TV is streaming static like that one time he saw El use her mind powers to see if Hopper was running late with their KFC. 

Thinking about Hopper made him cry earlier. 

When Steve feels the sheer mass of his house about to swallow him whole, he wears his father's shirts and his mother's perfume. The shirts are too big and people think he's screwing an older lady (probably Mrs Henderson or Joyce) but he likes the feeling of being less alone. 

He doesn't have anything left of Hopper's, aside from the BIC he placed into Steve's shaking fingers as he struggled to light a cigarette on the Byers' porch; after he'd lost his own to the fires in the tunnels. It doesn't feel like much, but Steve treasures it; lights all the candles that litter the ground floor of his house with the matches his parents have collected during their hotel stays, so as not to waste the fluid and render the "gift" useless. 

He was probably meant to save it for another hero moment. Instead, he keeps it under his pillow at night, in his pocket when the weather gets that bit cooler. Yeah, he can keep the bat under his bed, but nails poking out the pockets of his old Members Only would look a little odd. 

When he was little, Steve's mom used to tease his hair out with her pointed fingernails and blow cool air against the back of his neck. Like when they were attending an event or a launch upstate and things got too stuffy. Her breath always smelled sharp, _acrid_. A scent Steve later (but not too much later) associated with alcohol. 

There is one time he remembers, when he had been crying, because dad got mad at him for not wanting to go to the bathroom by himself, for wanting dad to come with him. His father was embarrassed and pinched Steve's arm really tight like a cuff behind the Diver's exotic plant pots. 

He asked Steve, _what age are you?_ Which Steve thought was dumb because his dad should _know_ his age.

He said, _you're not a baby, are you Steven?_

He said, _can't you take a piss by yourself?_

He said, _what? Do you need me to hold it for you and point? Jesus._

And then he was gone.

He was gone and clapping his associates on the back and Steve was forgotten like he would be every day of his life after that. 

Any time he returned to mom, she was loose and laughing and had that smell again. One time she sloshed red wine onto his white trainers and laughed about it even though he was seconds from bursting into tears. 

This time, though -- the last time he truly asked his father for anything -- she looked at him from her position on Mrs Diver's chaise-longue and allowed her face to soften in sympathy at his puffy bottom lip and half-formed tears. She pulled him into her lap, all silks and furs and wine on her breath and said:

"You walk around the world like you've got a layer of skin missing, Stevie. Like everything hurts you _that bit more_."

Steve doesn't remember much after that, figuring he fell asleep. But he wonders if that's how El feels; walking around this world that has taken so much from her -- that had given her so little in the first place. At least Steve has a mom, even if she is perpetually intoxicated. At least he has a dad, even if that dad hates him. 

El had Hopper, and the Russians took him from her. From them. The Russians murdered him and _god_ , Steve wishes it had been him instead. 

...

Sometimes, when he gets like this, though he would never admit to it, Steve’s mind wanders to daydreams of whiskey kisses and expressions that are smudged beneath charcoal; hard to distinguish, hard to hold onto. 

He grasps for these visions like they’re only happening because he’s taken too many of his mom’s prescription pills. Like he only did it so she’d notice (she wouldn’t), not because some Russian spies beat him to an incapable pulp and pumped him and Robin full of drugs, and maybe Rob’s just stronger than him, because he’s had a real hard time trying to get by without the rush. 

The truth is, nobody ever thought Steve Harrington was a drug addict. 

It’s not like he was doing lines of coke off Tina Beauregard’s flat stomach _every_ night. That was only once, when he was sixteen, and it was only because he wanted to have sex with her. 

Weed was another story. Everyone did that. He and Tommy had been lighting up together in his mother’s good room since middle school. Sometimes Carol would join, and bitch about how bad they smelled. Sometimes she’d lay with her head in Steve’s lap while Tommy gave her a foot massage; flaked out and floating on another plane of existence. 

Other things they’d dabbled in -- stuff graduates of Hawkins’ High brought back from college while they were visiting over the holidays. He and Tommy loved it, they rolled in it, they’d do some lines and go driving around Hawkins like it was their _city_ , like they had any control over their lives at all in this hellhole of a town. 

When things would go wrong, when someone got hurt, Tommy would always take the fall. Because Tommy’s parents really loved him, and they never stayed mad for too long, only worried. 

It was convenient for Steve at the time, because absence made his parents compensate in discipline, however inconsistent it was. The instability clung to Steve like a bad smell, one that said _lock up your daughters, lock up your wives_. 

One that said, _that boy is going nowhere. Fast_.

And that was true, for a while at least. Then it was false, because Steve found his -- albeit temporary -- purpose in a group of nerdy kids who depended on him to get places because their moms wouldn’t let them cycle anywhere after Will Byers got lost in the woods and came out _different_.

But then, you know, the Russians. They happened. They tripped a wire in his brain that had been meticulously put in place upon the arrival of Nancy Wheeler into his barren life, because if he couldn’t stop popping his mother’s Xanax every night before bed, he at least had to stop downing whatever baggie Tommy H. and the other guys from the basketball team tossed at him each weekend. 

Because he wasn’t like that. He didn’t have a problem.

Until Starcourt, at least. 

Steve knew from like, issues with Carol’s dad, that people with a problem rarely knew they had a problem. And that was like, sad. 

But Steve could say aloud, in the void of his bedroom, where not a soul would ever hear him scream (where he never heard Barb scream), that he _needed_ this. 

That if someone, like, tried to take away the only thing that was getting him by -- the kids had each other, Nancy had Jonathan, Jonathan had Nancy, Robin was _fine_ , and Joyce… _no_ \-- it’d be like they were trying to rob him of a limb and feed it to a demodog before his very eyes. 

And maybe that’s worse. That he knows it’s a problem. Carol’s dad didn’t know, or at least had the decency to pretend. But Steve can barely do that. And maybe that means he’s a bad person, like everyone already thinks. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be in the Party, or Erica painting his nails, or Joyce’s kisses in passing to the back of his shoulder because _why bother trying to reach when you just won’t stop growing!_

Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be here. But he is, and that’s _his_ problem, not theirs. 

Truth is, if Steve could be a different person, he would. 

...

That fall, Steve Harrington jumps off the roof of his house and into his pool like his end of summer party is an MTV montage. Bright blue ripples pulse above him, a world submerged in molasses. Slow, the colour of Nancy's eyes. He thinks. Probably. Maybe it's been too long. 

If the cops come, it’s of little importance to him. He could get a reaction out of Hop, get him all scary and mad in the front seat of the cruiser about how he expected better from _one of his kids_. 

Hop wouldn’t take him to the station, no. He’d drive Steve round to the Byers’ place and stick him on the couch with the TV turned on full blast to make his skull throb. He’d make Steve stand when Joyce hurried into the room with concern pinching her delicate features. He’d make Steve explain the whole situation and how _stupid_ he’d been and how he’s definitely a bad influence on the kids because _who jumps off the roof of their two story mansion and into the pool in the dead of fall_. 

Joyce would be disappointed.

Hop would be mad. Call him _stupid_ . Call him out for breaking one of their _rules_. 

And Steve would smile because that was what it felt like to be cared about. 

Hopper would be mad, because Hopper cared. And being called stupid by someone who cared felt a lot better than being called stupid by someone who kept you in Hawkins and wouldn’t let you work for him out of sheer embarrassment. 

Steve would tell Hop that. 

Tell him _I love you_.

And Hop would be mad, but at least he’d _know_. 

But Hop is dead, and Callahan along with some rookies from the big city are the only troops attempting to dismantle the chaos of Steve’s creation. 

Callahan books him for being, like, super intoxicated and evidently a _danger to himself and others_ . He nudges Steve into the _back_ of his cruiser and tells everyone else to go home before more arrests are made. Like he has the manpower now to even execute that.

Steve kind of feels like the life has been sucked out of the poor guy. He doesn’t even waste energy on a lecture, like only Hopper was good for that. 

He drives in silence, Steve’s hands cuffed and resting atop his chlorine soaked jeans, to the sound of Madonna, maybe. Steve only listened to that when he was still friends with Carol. Sometimes Max and El would want him to stick a tape on and he’d do it because he’s weak for those kids but he doesn’t know anything, _okay_? He just knows Hop wouldn’t play this shit at 2am when he’s meant to be all stern and intimidating and arresting a teenager for trying to split his head open on the back patio. 

They arrive at the station, and maybe Hop had talked about him before because Flo wraps a towel round him so tightly that his limbs feel smothered and lazy. Maybe she’s just nice, or hates the dripping mess Steve has already created on the station’s floor. 

There’s a little red running through the clear, like when Billy Hargrove made his brain blow up like a balloon and Byers thought it was brain fluid leaking from his ears and nose. 

But this is water. Water with blood. Water from the pool that Barb died in. If Steve shuts his eyes really tight he can imagine that his jump from the roof sent him flying with such force towards the pool that his hands touched Barb and the bloated and bloody mess the demogorgon made of her. 

But the reality is that Steve’s nose is probably bleeding. Or his head. Or his ears. Because Flo is pressing tissues into his hands and an ice pack that is meant to… he doesn’t know. Nothing hurts, so how can he know? He doesn’t struggle. He sits in the chair that the officers assign him and he lets Flo poke and prod like she’s his grandma, or what he can imagine a grandma might be like. 

He laughs a little when someone, in the background of his focus, asks about contacting his parents. Asks what age he is. Asks if he feels the need to be seen by a doctor. 

Steve doesn’t _know_. 

He hasn’t spoken to his parents since maybe, like, the end of summer. Since Hawkins was on the news and he was seen in the fray of people carrying kids out of Starcourt Mall. His mother acted like he was some kind of hero, like Steve wasn’t just saving his kids because they were _his_. Because they’d kind of already been saved and he was the one tasked with getting Max away from Hargrove’s corpse so the feds could clean him up. 

She had screamed and tore chunks out of Steve’s forearms with her stubby nails but he _had_ her. When she went limp in his arms on the way to the ambulances parked out front he _had_ her. And he had the scars to prove it. 

Dad was embarrassed. Like Steve was meant to stay out of these things. Like he hadn’t only been working in this pseudo mall because his dad wanted to punish him for flunking his senior year and being benched from the basketball team. All the good things Steve did, dad had to get mad about. 

And he can only laugh, really. Spurts of it erupting from between blue lips as Flo tilts his head back and dabs at his nose. She tuts, but she doesn’t comment. Like she knew his parents were never going to come home, like the whole damn town knew and they were just waiting for Steve to come out and _say it_. 

She packs his nose with something, because it won’t stop bleeding. There’s no signs of him having hit his head so Callahan asks if he’s taken anything. Snorted anything. If he does _drugs_. 

That one really takes the cake. 

Because yeah, Steve does drugs. Steve does lots of things. He lives alone in a giant house -- has done since the age of 12 -- he fights monsters from an alternate dimension with a bunch of kids, his ex-girlfriend, and her new boyfriend. 

But he can’t talk about that. He can’t talk about any of it. So he shakes his head, tells Callahan _no, sir. I don’t do drugs_. 

Tells him, _it’s from Starcourt, sir_. 

Not: _Hargrove and Byers too, sir_.

Tells him, _happens a lot_. 

Tells him, _Hopper knew all about it. It was a whole thing_. 

Not: _Dr Owens told me my brain is all scrambled up from all the beatings it’s taken and sometimes it overreacts to situations and bleeds all over my favourite shirt_.

Not: _The Doc also told me I’ll probably never hear out of my left ear again, so could you speak up enough for me to hear what you’re whispering to Flo over there_.

And they shut up after that. It’s not like Steve is self-absorbed enough to think that they’re not grieving too. He gets it. Flo cried at the funeral. Steve made sure she got back to her car okay. 

Callahan got drunk with Powell and they hid each others’ keys. 

There are lots of things Steve wishes he couldn’t remember from that day. Because as bad as Barb’s funeral was, as bad as Bob’s, and even Hargrove’s, nothing prepared them for the loss of the Chief. 

Nothing. 

...

Steve gets kept overnight with some tissue packed up his nose and two Tylenol. 

Flo drapes a brown leather jacket over him before heading home. The fuzzy lining on the collar smells like coffee and stale cigarettes. Smells a bit like the tunnels. Smells like _home_.

Steve burrows into it. He sleeps better than he has in months. 

...

“Who chewed you up and spit you out?”

His head hangs upside down from the cot at the station and Steve’s line of sight collides with a vision of freckles and band-aids for the sake of fashion. Mostly.

He knows the Star Wars one; he stole it from Dustin to stick on her knee two days ago. Kissed it better first and all. 

“Ay, Rob.” 

“Funniest thing, dingus,” And she yanks him up from his bed for the night, jacket almost slipping from his grip before his arms manage to find their sleeves. “You can imagine my shock when, despite me having warned you _hey, Steve, don’t have a party at your McMansion, you hate everyone in this town_ , I hear Nicole and goddamn _Laurie_ talking about how _Steve Harrington went and jumped off his roof last night, isn’t he just crazy?_ While I’m helping my mom carry, like, a million trays of frozen lasagna.”

“Oh, well.” He’s real dry, throat raw from the previous night, nose blocked from the crusted blood. “I imagine that was a real _shocker_ , huh.”

She sneers at him, shooting Powell a wave before ducking out the front door. 

Steve winces at the light, the din of mid-morning? Afternoon? Traffic. He tugs the jacket further around himself, knocking his hip against Robin’s as they walk.

Because he’s not blind, or totally dulled in his senses (only slightly). He knows she’s probably upset with him, or worried. This isn’t the first time she’s been called about him, in some form or another, but it is the first time she’s had to pick him up from the station.

“So did her little garden party finish early or something?” Because it can only be like eleven in the morning, maybe. 

“Steve… it’s like _three-thirty_ . The _lunch_ ended half an hour ago. Are you kidding me?”

And it takes him a minute to grasp it --- that he was tucked into lock-up at, what, three in the morning and wasn’t woken again for another twelve hours. Did they not want to wake him? Did they forget about him? Or was it that Robin was the only one around who could pick him up? 

He’s torn from his thoughts by a tug at his sleeve as they walk down Main. 

“Little big for you, no? Is it your dad’s or something? He doesn’t strike me as a trucker kind of guy.”

Tommy’s is; he wants to tell her that. That Tommy’s dad pulls week-long interstate shifts and was still a larger part of Steve’s life than his own father. But it’s not relevant. He shrugs. And part of him wonders if Robin is cold, because it’s coming into the middle of fall now and she’s wearing dungarees that don’t even make it past her knees, but if he gives her this jacket, like he has done with so many sweaters, he may never get it back. His brain can’t bear the thought of that. 

“Flo gave it to me.” And Steve thinks maybe he should say more, because this isn’t just anyone he’s talking to --- he can trust Robin like he’s never been able to trust anyone, except maybe Dustin. But, for the moment, this is his secret to keep. His feeling to store away in the empty space in his chest. 

“I think it’s from the lost and found. I look smokin’ in it, right?”

She snorts and shoves him down the remaining length of the sidewalk. And though the guilt is there, the shame from having torn up his house with people who turn his insides because he couldn’t cope with the thought of _remembering_ , Steve feels okay in that moment. 

He’s got the lighter in his pocket and the jacket on his shoulders and his soulmate by his side. And maybe things will be better today.

“C’mon, dingus. I told Dusty-bun we’d drop him and the other nerds to Mike’s before six. And you owe Erica, like, two whole litres of ice cream that we don’t have, so, _coffee_.”

...

He’s like, mildly more sober after coffee and a visit to his mom’s bathroom cabinet. His house is relatively clean by the end of the evening because _Robin hates mess_ , and because he needs to shower and _not stink_ if they’re going to see the kids. 

The kids, meaning: Dustin, Lucas, Wheeler, Little Byers, and maybe Max. If they’re lucky. Definitely not El. Never El.

El who’s remained holed up in Ms Byers’ bedroom for weeks. Who no one is allowed to see because she’s grieving. Because she lost her dad and _nothing_ is going to bring him back. 

Steve can’t stop thinking about it. 

He used to get like that over things that shouldn’t really affect him. Carol called him a maniac and would kiss his cheek like she didn’t mean it in a bad way. Tommy just laughed, teased, indulged. Like when Steve wanted to sneak into the public pool despite having one in his back garden, when he would think every girl he laid eyes on was the prettiest in the world before he put his dick in them and got bored. Like when _The Outsiders_ came out and Steve watched over the entirety of spring break. Returned to the Hawk for every single screening. Inexplicably cried each time.

Like with Nancy. 

Yeah, that one surprised them all. 

Maybe that’s why Tommy didn’t like Nancy. Because he could see her for what she was.

Steve never likes to think too hard on that one.

But he thinks about Eleven a lot. When he swallows a handful of his mom’s pills dry, when Robin scratches her scab while waiting for him to fix his hair and bleeds onto the bathroom tile, when Max doesn’t get into the car with Lucas but Madonna still plays on the radio. 

“Ugh.” Robin hates it, puts her feet up on the dash. She pops the same gum she’s been chewing for two hours now and looks at the brats in the rearview. 

Before she can begin on another line of conversation, Steve snaps their attention towards him. Eyes on the road, he doesn’t really want them to see the bags underneath. Fuck, he doesn’t even know if his pupils are dilated; which is the kind of shit Dustin always notices. 

“So, who’ve we got today, maggots? I’m picking Will up, right? No Max?”

He hates to say it, to acknowledge the rising frequency of her absences, but he’d like to mentally prepare himself for a visit to the Hargrove/Mayfield house in his current state. These are the things Steve _needs_ to know. 

“She’s already at Will’s.” Lucas mumbles, chin fixed to his chest. Steve can only see a little, but he can hear the clickety-clack of those weird and unnecessary nerd dice being rolled against each other. Huh.

Dustin interjects, far lighter, but still with an ounce of gravity that shows he’s not entirely oblivious to what’s going on. 

“Yeah, she and El are having a _girl’s_ day. No boys allowed.” He waves his hands at this, like it’s a big deal, like if he makes the situation a bit of a joke they won’t have to think about why none of them have seen El in over a fortnight now. 

“Well, that’s because boys stink. And lack the ability to process complex thought.”

Robin’s good at doing that -- playing along. It’s not like she doesn’t get it now, get that there are certain things she can’t talk about. But she always seems to know what’s okay, what will detract from the constant weight of everything not being particularly good right now. Steve wishes he could do that. 

“We process complex thoughts just fine, thank you very much.” 

“Yeah, and you’re best friends with _Steve Harrington_ . Resident dumbass and single-handedly responsible for global-warming because he burnt a hole in the ozone with his _hairspray_.”

He’d always thought Lucas was such a nice boy. After being acquainted with him for a while, Steve now realises where Erica gets it from. 

“Shit, Lucas. You’re sounding an awful lot like Wheeler right now.” And he doesn’t enjoy being mean to them -- Steve isn’t entirely sure he’s ever enjoyed being mean to anyone -- but he’s tired and sometimes they’re just straight up assholes to him for zero valid reason. 

“Your girl problems are showing. Should probably, y’know, try and _talk_ to Max. Instead of stressing over what she may or may not be feeling. But what do I know? Being the resident _dumbass_ and all.”

Across the console, Robin gives him a swift kick with the rubber tip of her converse. It catches on the sparse hairs along his forearms and he winces. Steve refuses to look back now, to check his mirrors. He knows he made it weird, but fuck it. 

He’ll apologise later, over the walkie in the dead of night, and follow it up with ice cream and a trip to the arcade the following day. He’ll throw his arm around Lucas and pinch his shoulders with unbridled affection and tell him that it’s okay, y’know? It’s fine to be angry. And he shouldn’t take it out on his friends, no, but he can take it out on Steve. That’s what Steve’s _here_ for. 

Robin cranks the music all the way up as they bolt into the Byers’ driveway -- even though she loathes chart stuff -- dry dirt kicking up under the wheels of his beemer. Will’s out the front door before Steve can even get his seatbelt off, and Ms Byers waves from the porch with her arms wrapped around herself like she’s already feeling the beginnings of winter. 

She squints at Steve, just for a moment, but it’s replaced by a smile as Will gently shuts the car door and crams in beside the two other boys. It’s watery, her smile, and Steve’s heart shatters a little more inside his chest at the sight of her. 

Sometimes he thinks to himself about the things he’d do if Joyce were his mother. Like how he’d hug her every night before bed and talk to her about his day over the dirty dishes. How he’d bring her to the grocery store on a Saturday morning and push the cart while she gets through her list. How he’d tell her it’s okay that they can’t afford his favourite cereal this week, that he’s happy as ever with a seat at the table. 

But it’s not good to think about these things too much, especially not when they fall against comparisons to his own mother. His own mother who isn’t so much a person as a forgotten decoration that lacks any sense of purpose. 

Though, no, that’s not fair at all. Seeing as Steve was always more like his mother. _Pretty_ , she always says. Gave all her pretty to him when he was born, he sucked it right out of her. But pretty came with its own problems, apparently. Beautiful ones like both of them being the victims of his father’s absence, his father’s ability to throw money at anything and expect it to jump through hoops, or at least quit bothering him. 

Because Steve’s father definitely isn’t a person, more like a black hole, really. 

He sucks the life out of other people. _Him_ , not Steve. Or maybe that’s where he and Steve are the same. Nance would probably second that notion. 

Steve’s eyes catch on Ms Byers’ once more before he pulls out of the drive, finally some activity in the backseat as Will has managed to bring with him an ounce of excitement about their newest campaign. 

His eyes meet hers and he thinks that maybe they’re the same. Or that, at the very least, he’d like to look on the outside how Ms Byers feels on the inside. That is to say, he’d prefer to be someone else, and not the image of his parents’ son. 

...

Steve shows up to the Byers’ house two days after his big party. He’s still riding on the feeling of it, of the kids forgiving him for his harsh words, on the feeling of Hopper’s jacket as a hefty weight on his shoulders. 

He’s drunk again. Or high. Or both. He sits on the floor with Will and tries to copy his drawings; kisses Joyce on the cheek with every ounce of love he has left in him when she brings him a Coke; musses Jonathan’s hair before he leaves for his shift at the movie theater. 

It’s like they’re _his_ and he can play house better than he’s ever been able to back in Loch Nora. Tommy and Carol never fit so perfectly into these roles, like the ones he made for the Byers. Tommy, his forever and sometimes soulmate; Carol, his brat and guardian angel. All belonging to one another in a perfect triangle. He loved them. _Loves_ them. But they’re no American dream.

Not like the Byers, no. 

No matter what dad says about Lonnie Byers and Joyce being _crazy_.

Joyce is a mom in the deepest and most raw sense of the word. He feels that, more than he ever felt it from his own mom, who never cared for him, was never attentive; needed his attention more than anything when his father showed blatant disinterest. Needed him to lock the bathroom and the medicine cabinet and turn down her sad songs when they threatened to blast the double-glazing from their bespoke windows. 

Joyce never needed anything from him except some help with the dinner, or with reaching the top shelf, or picking up Will when Jonathan is on a date with, _well…_ Nancy. 

Jonathan is someone he should hate -- for stealing Nancy, for taking those pictures of Steve and his _then_ girlfriend in his house. His _home_ . But you can forgive a brother for sleeping with the love of your life, right? Blood is thicker than water. All that. Jonathan has to be his brother in this ideal scenario because how else could he forgive him for that? How could he forgive a mere _friend_ for that?

Will goes without question. He’d _die_ for Will -- says as much when they’re adding shadows to the more sinister parts of their drawing with a pitch black water colour pencil from the set Steve bought him with his dad’s money.

“You don’t have to.” His voice cracks a little at the end, like the thought of Steve doing so worries him. As if they all didn’t fight their way to the firing line just to save this boy with the fever and the interdimensional parasite inside of him. 

Steve laughs at that. 

“But I want to.”

Distantly, he’s aware of the presence behind him. Will’s eyes have widened quite a bit since the beginning of their conversation, but they somehow get even bigger, eyebrows crawling up under his eerily straight bangs. 

No matter the situation, Steve’s always been able to feel El before he sees her. Maybe it’s like his sixth sense or something. Like he’s shit at school and being a friend and a boyfriend and a _son_ , but he can take a beating better than anyone, and always knows when the fourteen year old girl with super powers is knocking around.

He swipes his index finger under his nose to check for a nosebleed. Nothing. Huh. Maybe that’s not where his talents lie. 

“Hey, El.” He starts, without turning around, watching as Will fixes the shadows on the paper. “How you fee- ”

“Stupid.”

She walks around him to plonk herself down on the shag carpet, shirt sleeves rolled all the way up to her spindly elbows. 

“What now?”

“Stupid, Steve. We’re not stupid.”

Her eyes are all hardened and fixed, but warm. Pools that mirror his own, that mirror Mrs Byers. In fact, she’s the picture of Joyce in this moment, wavering upper lip and all. 

Absently, Steve reaches out to thumb at the line of her mouth, to break the harsh but unstable fix of her lip that seems to scorn him. 

“Relax, Cinderella. I know the rules.” 

Hopper made sure of that. Drilled them into Steve’s skull one night in the cabin when he needed someone to sit and watch _General Hospital_ with El while he dealt with an unexpected issue across town. Of course there was advice too. About Eggos and slamming doors and not letting El get inside your head.

He’s never liked that she’s able to do this. That she can glare right into the depths of his mind and pull out whatever she wants. But then, Steve must remind himself, El’s powers are gone; gone with no signs of coming back. Maybe he’s just that obvious.

Steve tries to go back to before, colouring in mindless swirls at the edge of the paper, ruining the picture, really. He passes Will the colours he needs, hands one to El to get her to participate, but she swats it from his fingers. 

He lifts his eyes to meet her own again and instead he meets a watery gaze, lashes clumped into something wet and soggy, cheeks reddened in attempt to hold back. 

“Then why do you _break_ them?”

He feels a little spikey at that, his hackles rising more than they really should. He’s not breaking anything. He’s been good; just like Hopper would want. He takes care of Joyce and he loves Nancy and Jonathan and the kids, and he’d _die_ for them. 

He’d have himself tortured by Russians, pulled apart at the seams all over again, just for them. He’d take a bullet, a knife, the bite of a million demodogs. He’d _do_ it. 

That’s not _stupid_ . That’s what _Hopper_ would do.

He can’t say that to her, of course. He knows El worries about all of them all the time, worries about losing them like she lost Hopper. But it’s not like Steve ever really thought himself to exist within that category -- of people that El thinks about regularly. 

“My ma always says _ask for forgiveness, sweetie. Not permission_.”

Steve’s voice catches a little on the southern lilt of his mother’s, how she used to try and hide it. She hid a lot of things, from his father specifically. Like these little phrases she’d coin and toss Steve’s way instead of actual direction and motherly advice. 

El’s brows tug together in the middle, eyes remaining wide and concern where most would typically pinch. Will’s eyeing their interaction with intrigue, because Steve’s never mentioned his mother. Not to anyone but Robin, that he can recall. 

“It’s like when we watched your new favourite.” He starts, recalling the time he sat her in front of the TV in the cabin and showed her any of the Disney princess movies that his mother had managed to collect on VHS, always saying they were for _her_ , _for the music_ , if his father dared ask. 

“‘Member how Cinderella knew she wasn’t supposed to go to the ball, but did it anyway. She had a swell time and paid for it later, sort of, but there was a happy ending and all.”

El pauses, then, thoughtfully, like she’s being cautious of his reaction, she says:

“But Cinderella did ask. Her step-mother said no…”

Right. And she’s got him there. Even Will nods, and he’s pretty sure the kid’s seen it all of once in total. 

“Okay, _okay_. Then take you going to see your mama, then to Chicago, all by yourself. You broke the rules then, right?”

Will looks at him then, like he’s ready to cut across whatever Steve plans on saying next because _what the hell?_

Steve doesn’t really grasp it until about twenty seconds after he receives that look. When the three of them are still sat on the floor and the colouring is forgotten and then only sound is whatever radio station Ms Byers has tuned into while she’s making the dinner. 

His body acts before his mind can even think to. If he were to wonder why that is, it could be attributed to the prescription bennies rattling around in his jacket pocket, with _Kitty Harrington_ printed onto the sticker in capital letters, faded and worn from the press of his thumb. It could be the two-ish hours of sleep or the four cups of coffee he’d drank before coming out here. It could be that Steve is lonely, and that a hug has rarely done anybody any harm. 

El’s tears wet the front of his old, blue t-shirt. The ones she’d been storing from earlier, probably. He knows he shouldn’t have said it, brought up the one major rift that she and Hopper had dealt with. 

But Steve is stupid. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

His parents knew, liked to pretend he wasn’t, when his second grade teacher would write letter after letter saying that Steve was worryingly behind in his abilities to read and write. Every teacher after that liked to pretend, because they were _smart_ and his parents had donated a sizable amount of cash in hand to the school in third grade. 

Tommy and Carol knew, which is why they always pushed him to the center of the crowd. Keg King, Homecoming King. _King Steve, everyone!_ Like he was their front man and they could pull his invisible puppet strings from behind the scenes. 

Nancy knew. Nancy knew better than anyone. Steve never liked to think about it too much because it made him get all upset. Wondering if that’s why she liked Jonathan better, over something that really couldn’t be helped. Steve wanted to tell her, wanted to scream at her, that he didn’t _choose_ to be this way, he’s not _lazy_. This is how he’s always been, and there’s really, truly nothing he can do about it. 

But he can pretend too. Like everyone else has. 

He can smile and be the cool guy and go to work and drive the kids around and be _their_ Steve. Their Steve, whose tummy is full of pills, lungs full of smoke; body full of adrenaline _too_ much of the time that makes him shake.

Soldier Steve, not King. 

He can cradle El’s soft curls to the ever-increasing hollow of his chest like it’s even possible to keep her there. Safe. Where Steve has built a wall a mile thick and won’t ever let anyone in. 

Her fingers pinch at his forearms, clinging through his sleeves like the ghost of Max’s nails; embedded. The sobs hiccup, jolting her in his grasp. And when Steve wraps around her on the Byers’ living room floor, he feels like he might be strangling her. Like it’s the _Jungle Book_ and he’s trying to squeeze the life out of her like that big, mean snake. Or piece her back together. He wishes he could do it more delicately. 

He tells her, _it’s okay. You’re okay_. 

Tells her, _you found your family_. 

Tells her, _you have a family, El. So many_.

Tells her, _you have me_.

Not: _I’d die for you too_.

Steve kisses the crown of her head and she quietens a fraction. It’s not until then that he realises how rapid the rise and fall of his chest is. How it rattles while the fingers of her left hand make indents along the notches of his spine. 

He can’t be certain of how long they remain sat there. Will’s got a hand on El’s narrow ankle and Ms Byers slouches into the doorframe like she can’t possibly handle _more_. More of anything. 

But she doesn’t intrude, and the moment is frozen like one of those dramatic paintings that are old and Italian and mom made him look at for hours in New York. 

When she rises, a determined set to her expression, an exasperated one that begs to memories of her adoptive father, El’s thumbs find the corners of his mouth. They stretch and tug his face into some butchered version of false happiness. 

“Not this.” She says, a severity to her gaze that Steve has only really witnessed in moments of intense battle. 

She then tugs again, down, and Steve aches with it, because no one’s face is made to make such a pained expression. 

“This is _okay_. It’s okay to feel this.”

And he nods like he gets it. Like her words make sense and these emotions they’re all feeling aren’t ugly things that shouldn’t see the light of day. El knows better than anyone, really. But Steve doesn’t think the ugly thing inside him is a result of the Upside Down; some people are just born with holes in their chests, born to people who don’t want to touch them for fear of feeling ugly on the inside too. 

But what’s inside El is beautiful, and it’s potential. She has opportunity now for a life that she probably couldn’t even fathom while locked up in Hawkins Lab. She should feel what she needs to feel and let her friends and family see because that’s what she _needs_. 

It’s not what Steve needs, he’s fully aware of what that is, but he nods anyway and presses a brief kiss to the palm of her hand. 

“We’ll be okay. Promise.”

El’s hands fall into her lap, and he wishes her eyes weren’t so like his own, that he wasn’t telling a lie to eyes that knew the truth. 

“Promise, Steve.”

And then it’s over; shattered. Ms Byers asks him, softly, to help her reach something in the kitchen. Will goes back to drawing. El goes to Joyce’s room, and he doesn’t see her again before he leaves. 

...

That night Steve finds himself alone, in the house his father built. In the house his father _had_ built. His mother’s poor taste surrounds him, and the blue glow of Barb’s graveyard lights his spotted ceiling. 

He and Tommy had stuck glow in the dark stars up there when they were eleven. His father made him take them down. The white paint is still all tacky from where the adhesive never quite rubbed off.

His eyes wander further and Steve can’t sleep. For fear of what he sees when he closes his eyes; regret for what he’s done while they’re open. 

His fingers press into the markings of earlier, into the scars from the months prior. Eyes screw up and squeeze shut and try to think of better times, before realising he hasn’t got any. Steve knows it’s likely that this is it, that his life hardly exists behind this moment, and this vague sequence of events. 

He should call Robin. But he doesn’t. Just like he never called Nancy when things were bad back in ‘84. 

He could call his mother. And he could call her again. And again. And again. She might finally get back to him in a few days. Or weeks, if it slips her mind. 

Calling his dad, now, _that’s_ a funny one. 

His feet drag him to the bathroom, cool tiles a shock to the senses. 

Finger clasp the reflective service of the bathroom cabinet, printed and grubby from a daily habit, and he’s like a kid in a candy shop. 

But Steve doesn’t want an upper, something to keep him awake and alert and alive for a few hours. 

Steve just wants to _sleep_. 

So he pops one, two, three sleeping pills dry. He splashes his face with cold water from the faucet. He climbs into the clawfoot tub, and Steve closes his eyes. 

If he dreams, they are gratefully forgotten. 

...

_Steve, honey, look. I hate to tell you this, but we’re moving. I know Hop didn’t want us to but I found a nice place in Illinois and God, I just think the kids deserve a fresh start, y’know? Maybe Bob was right. I… well-- never mind that._

_I know this leaves a lot to you, and to Nancy, but these kids need you, okay? You need to_ wake up _and be there for them. They love you. We love you. So please, yeah? You can always call me. You’re so strong, Steve, but you don’t always have to be. I-I love you._

A pause and then:

_You look just like him in that jacket. Like a second ski---_

_Beeeeeeeep--_

  
  


When Steve Harrington thinks of his life from above, and how it must seem, he sees all the things he has going for him. Former king of Hawkins High, son of a CEO and a faded silver screen queen. He’s got his mother’s frightened eyes and his father’s severe jaw, and a join-the-dots of moles that cover his entire body and appear to be entirely his own. 

He’s got a Hollywood head of hair, and a history with every girl who graduated senior year last fall -- some who graduated this fall too. He’s supposed to be, like, a phoenix from the ashes of Starcourt Mall. Billy Hargrove is dead and King Steve should be his successor, but he’s not. Steve doesn’t have it in him anymore. 

He has all these people, see. These kids, who aren’t even really kids anymore. Who don’t need him but seek him out anyway. He thinks he has Nancy and Jonathan now, after everything they’ve been through together. And Robin, Robin who’s had ample opportunity to get a new job without him and insists that they work together still. When she _knows_ she could do better, when she knows that friendship doesn’t mean picking someone up from the police station in the middle of the day, high and bloody and hungover, and taking them home to clean up the mess they made. 

Steve always thought he deserved _something_ , but he doesn’t deserve these people. 

Not with what he does and how he acts, like life is something worth eroding with prescription medication meant for someone else, with frat house drugs, and the scotch from his father’s mahogany cabinet. 

He was meant to carry the torch for Hopper, pick up where the Chief left off. He’s the oldest of the guys, the most athletic without a doubt. He’s the kind of guy that’s meant to swoop in and save the day, with a nail bat, some gasoline, and the lighter that Hopper gave him.

But he can’t even drag himself out of the tub to answer Joyce Byers’ official goodbye call.

Steve had always thought that he was alone. Lived alone. Didn’t really have parents, despite how much people liked to ask and talk about his dad and how his mom never let him travel alone because she couldn’t trust him. 

But he still felt cared about, up to a point. And even when it felt like he was passing that point and looking at it in his rearview mirror --- because Russians and gates and alternate dimensions --- at least he still had Joyce. Or whatever abstract concept of her he had constructed in his addled mind. 

Maybe some people are just meant to be alone. Maybe Steve is one of their number. 

Maybe the Party and Hopper and Joyce were never truly his in the first place. 

The phone rings again, somehow louder this time, and he knows he has to answer her. Because she worries. Because she lost a son for a bit, then a boyfriend, then a-- _well_. And while Steve may never hold that level of importance to her, Joyce Byers is still a nice enough person that she’d spare him some concern. Not that he deserves it. 

Using the edge of the sink as leverage, Steve drags himself from the tub, skin squeaking against the porcelain that’s left red crease marks all over his body. The phone, sat in the entrance hall, next to their answering machine and his mom’s favourite vase, is definitely ringing more than is customary, so Steve picks up the pace as much as his exhausted self can manage, though the come down has always made him a little unsteady on his feet.

It’s at the last step he trips over himself, catching onto the banister before he can manage to collide face first with the imported carpet. 

Picking the phone up off the receiver, he shimmies at the drawer of the side table a little, there’s definitely some Oxy stuck in there from ma’s last visit, if only he can manage to get it out. 

His skin shivers against the early morning chill, having forgotten to put a shirt on before heading for the bathroom the night before. Fall is well on its way. 

His drawl is practised, devil may care kind of thing that he preached to Dustin all those months ago on the railroad out beside the junkyard. Like this is his home, like he’s totally _at_ home in it. 

“Harrington residence, go for Steve.”

Cramped and shaking fingers tug at the handle, cold brass touching even colder flesh like _rigor mortis_ \--- or whatever Nance used to call it. It opens, and stiff hands find the bottle. 

“Hey, dingus. I think I scored us a gig. How do you feel about home cinema?”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i've had this on my laptop for months now. at least half of it is from before season 3 even came out, but i feel like the "loss" of hopper really helped me out here, as unfortunate as that is. i'm only realising now that i've listed him as a present character in the fic, despite only existing in steve's memories like tommy/carol/nancy etc. do. but i think, for steve, hopper exists very clearly in a pocket of his mind where he goes to escape. and sometimes joyce is there too. and all the good things. 
> 
> sometimes steve's mom is there also. i don't know. i have a very specific view of her that isn't at all canon compliant. 
> 
> i do hope you enjoyed this, as i know people were interested in the idea of steve and hopper's relationship and what we don't see of it in the show, from the reviews on my previous fic (though this is definitely a big jump from that situation). if you have the time, any comments would be appreciated, but really just thank you for reading and sticking through this unnecessarily long author's note??
> 
> title is from brandon flowers' _lonely town _, which is the most steve song ever so go check it out!!__


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